Hello Costas, On Sat, 22 Jun 2002 07:48:04 +0300 GMT (22/06/02, 11:48 +0700 GMT), Costas Papadopoulos wrote:
CP> I hope the moderator doesn't mind my replying to you on the list, CP> given the current low traffic. I agree it is more than just OT, and will follow the tiniest hint of the moderators to move this to TBOT. My other reason to use this list is that I am testing batpost.com. CP> If you follow the currency markets you will see that sometimes even CP> the fundamentals are not so important as the people's sentiment. Yes and no. People's sentiments are part of the deal. If everyone believes the dollar will go up, it will; and v.v. But who the people that make currencies move up or down? It is not you and me, we are jsut bystanders. Governments actively influence the exchange rates by buying or selling according to mututal agreements - this is how the European Monetary System worked until introduction of the euro in 1999. Then, there are institutional investors. The currency dealers, George Soros being the biggest. These people move amounts of funds per day that exceed some countries' GDP's. For us, it is to read the signs upon which these two groups will act. the easy indicators are, for example, interest rates. If the interest rates in the US are very high (Reagan-aera), they will want to buy USD so as to earn a nice profit from interest. Then there are economic indicators. CP> Lately, even though on the one hand there have been good economic CP> indicator announcements in the USA, they have done almost nothing to CP> control the fall in the Dollar since the equities market on the other CP> hand has been disappointing (Enron etc.). Yes, investor confidence is shattered, and the institutional investors (this time I am talking about mutual funds and the like) are shifting their capital to Europe. But there is another side to it. The US is not out of the slump, and the high dollar is hurting their export industry. They *want* the dollar lower. CP> Even the Bank of Japan's recent attempts to lower the value of the CP> Yen versus the Dollar has not done much to change sentiment. So on CP> the basis of the above you may be right in your forecast - well I CP> hope so for your sake ;-) Let's watch the currency game. It is a very slow game, unless you invest so much money that a few tenths of a percentage point mean something to you. Don't forget the cost of buying and selling; my bank moves the funds between the different currency accounts without fees, but watch the spread in exchange rate whether you buy or sell! Maybe I should become a money changer, it must be a nice living from the spread. <g> CP> On a more detailed level, it doesn't hurt to remember that by CP> definition at any moment in time the exchange rate represents the CP> views of 50% of the people who believe it will go up and of the other CP> 50% who believe it will go down! LOL! -- Cheers, Thomas. Moderator der deutschen The Bat! Beginner Liste. Wann wird denn endlich der Niagara-Fall geloest oder die Formel 1 ausgerechnet ?? Message reply created with The Bat! 1.60q under Chinese Windows 98 4.10 Build 2222 A using an AMD Athlon K7 1.2GHz, 128MB RAM _________________________________________________________ Archives : http://tbbeta.thebat.dutaint.com Moderators : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Bugs/Wishes: https://www.ritlabs.com/bt/
